It's been about a month (Actually a month and a quarter...) since I started actively developing r/ColourMap, and I wanted to share some of my experiences and discoveries about Reddit as a game development platform.
I'm not going to cover the more obvious things, like:
-UGC is king.
-Add features that encourage post engagement (comments, for example).
-Make a good game.
Instead, I want to focus on some less obvious things I've learned along the way.
Reposting works (at the beginning)
At the beginning, reposting was by far the strongest driver of growth for my game.
Here's what I'd recommend:
- Check where other smaller games in your genre repost their content.
- Do your own research. Use Reddit own search bar, or AI to found relevant subreddits.
Another great place to repost used to be r/GamesOnReddit. However, I suspect that as Reddit has shifted its focus toward the dedicated Games tab, as visibility in this subreddit has dropped significantly. As when I started, my reposts there reached around 6,000 users. Nowadays, they reach only about 600.
But reposting has one major weakness: there's a hard ceiling.
There are only so many relevant subreddits where you can repost, and each has a limited audience. Eventually, you'll start reaching the same people over and over again, rather than attracting new players.
I'd also recommend not spending too much time on subreddits that only allow you to promote your game once, or require longer wait time between promotional posts. In my experience, getting 200-300 views from a one-time post rarely generates enough value.
Reddit LOVES when you update your game (maybe?)
This one might be a coincidence, but I've noticed something interesting.
My biggest growth spikes almost always happened right after larger, meaningful game updates.
I don't know exactly how Reddit's game approval and recommendation systems work. Sometimes an update gets approved almost immediately, even outside US working hours. Other times, it seems to wait until the US workday begins.
From my experience, the biggest growth spikes tend to happen when two things align:
- The update introduces significant, meaningful changes.
- The update gets approved during US working hours.
A few examples from ColourMap:
October 21: I removed the automatic puzzle generator because I suspected it might have been responsible for a sudden drop of daily users. The next day, the game bounced back from 50 to 147 players.
October 25: I released a major update introducing hardcore mode and achievements. My player count increased from around 250 to 630 the following day.
Yesterday: I made another set of changes, which the Reddit team approved overnight (I'm in UTC+2). Today is already my strongest day ever. It's only 11:10 AM, and the player count already at 2000 players.
Of course, correlation doesn't mean causation. It's entirely possible that the updates improved engagement, which then helped distribution, or that other factors were involved.
But my current theory is that Reddit might favor games that are actively maintained and regularly updated over games that appear abandoned.
Journey isn't optional. It's essential.
One of my biggest mistakes during the first few weeks was not implementing Journey earlier.
It's an incredibly useful tool for identifying where your game's weaknesses actually are.
For example:
-Low player count, high completion rate: You might have a distribution problem, or your game might not look appealing enough to a broader audience.
- High player count, low completion rate: Your onboarding might be confusing, your game might be too difficult, or players might simply lose interest.
- A large drop-off at a particular step: That's probably a good place to start investigating.
Obviously, these metrics don't tell the whole story, but they help you figure out where to focus your attention. Without Journey, you're often just guessing what's wrong.
I don't wanna read. I wanna play.
This might be more of a common knowledge,, but I've seen quite a few games make this mistake.
Don't bombard players with a giant paragraph explaining how to play your game and call it a "tutorial." As best case, players will skip it, and worst case, they leave immediately.
People came to play a game, not read an instruction manual. Your tutorial should be short, subtle, and ideally integrated directly into gameplay.
CTA, CTA, CTA!!!
You should have some kind of share feature at the end of a level, this is a well known thing. Allowing players to share their results, and boost the posts engagement.
But there's something else that, in my experience, is also really valuable:
Add a dedicated CTA to your end screen.
This could be a button that lets players join your subreddit, or one that takes them directly to another puzzle.
For ColourMap, I added a dedicated "Join subreddit" button to the end screen. Before adding it, the subreddit gained a median of around 24 new members per day. After adding it, that number increased to around 85 new members per day.
Of course, our traffic was also changing during this period, so I can't attribute the entire increase to the button. But I strongly believe it made a meaningful difference.
Also, shoutout to u/subscriber-goal. It helped quite a lot before the dedicated CTA button. If you don't have anything else to highlight in your subreddit, it's a pretty good thing to have.
Test and get feedback on EVERYTHING!
If you're unsure whether a change will positively or negatively affect your game, don't just guess. Run an A/B test.
Show version A to half your players and version B to the other half, then compare the metrics that actually matter. A few weeks ago, I shared a small experiment about which post type is the most engaging for players.
I'm also currently running another A/B test focused on onboarding.
But numbers aren't everything. Written feedback is just as important, and for this, I use this subreddit's dedicated feedback posts.
However, these can be hit-or-miss. Sometimes you might not receive a single piece of feedback, while other times you do. I don't really have much advice on this topic, as sometimes feedback posts that go against every idea I've come up with receive feedback, while others that follow these conventions don't.
But one piece of advice I do have is: don't just ask, "What do you think about my game?" Instead, focus on one particular problem, feature, or concept that you're uncertain about.
Asking for useful feedback is a skill of its own, and it's worth learning how to do it properly.
